VLC-based Data Transfer and Energy Harvesting Mobile System

Abstract

This paper explores a low-cost portable visible light communication (VLC) system to support the increasing needs of lightweight mobile applications. VLC grows rapidly in the past decade for many applications (e.g., indoor data transmission, human sensing, and visual MIMO) due to its RF interference immunity and inherent high security. However, most existing VLC systems heavily rely on fixed infrastructures with less adaptability to emerging lightweight mobile applications. This work proposes Light Storage, a portable VLC system takes the advantage of commercial smartphone flashlights as the transmitter and a solar panel equipped with both data reception and energy harvesting modules as the receiver. Light Storage can achieve concurrent data transmission and energy harvesting from the visible light signals. It develops multi-level light intensity data modulation to increase data throughput and integrates the noise reduction functionality to allow portability under various lighting conditions. The system supports synchronization together with adaptive error correction to overcome both the linear and non-linear signal offsets caused by the low time-control ability from the commercial smartphones. Finally, the energy harvesting capability in Light Storage provides sufficient energy support for efficient short range communication. Light Storage is validated in both indoor and outdoor environments and can achieve over 98% data decoding accuracy, demonstrating the potential as an important alternative to support low-cost and portable short range communication.